A New Company Called Alphabet Now Owns Google

Larry Page, Google co-founder and CEO. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Google has reorganized itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.

“What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google,” Google co-founder Larry Page said in a blog post this afternoon. “This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main Internet products contained in Alphabet instead.”

In other words, Google will continue to run internet-centric services such as Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and Android. But “moonshot” projects such as the X Lab and the Calico life extension project will operate as somewhat separate entities.

“Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related. Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence,” Page wrote.

Page will serve as CEO of Alphabet, while Google co-founder Sergey Brin will serve as president. Longtime Page lieutenant Sundar Pichai will take over as Google CEO.

“In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. We’ll also make sure we have a great CEO for each business, and we’ll determine their compensation,” Page said.

According to Page’s post, Alphabet will eventually report the earnings of Google separate from the other spinoff companies. According to the company’s SEC filing, Alphabet will eventually replace Google as the publicly traded company on the Nasdaq stock exchange, and all shares of Google will convert to shares of Alphabet. Company shares will continue to trade on the Nasdaq under the same GOOGL and GOOG ticker symbols.

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Tony Fadell Has Left Nest. But Google Isn’t Done with Hardware

Two years after Google purchased smart-home hardware startup Nest for a cool $3.2 billion, Tony Fadell is leaving as head of the company. Fadell confirmed the move in a blog post, but said he will continue advising Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and CEO Larry Page. Marwan Fawaz, a former Motorola Mobility executive, replaces Fadell.

“After six years of working on Nest, leading it through 4.5 years of double-digit growth and consistently high marks from customers, I leave Nest in the hands of a strong and experienced leadership team,” Fadell said in a statement. Page offers his own praise, saying, “Under Tony’s leadership, Nest has catapulted the connected home into the mainstream. He’s a true visionary and I look forward to continuing to work with him in his new role as advisor to Alphabet.”

Google bought Nest in 2014 with an eye toward diving into smart hardware and bringing its web services into your home. The deal gave Google an seasoned hardware executive. Fadell worked at Apple, where he was a key figure in developing the iPod and instrumental in designing the iPhone, before founding Nest in 2010 to reinvent “unloved” but important home gadgets like the thermostat and the smoke alarm. When Google reorganized under Alphabet last year, it made Nest an independent business and left Fadell in charge.

According to a report from The Information, Nest has struggled lately. Employees griped about Fadell’s management style, and said the company is floundering. Nest missed sales and product targets, employees said. (Nest denies the company stumbled under Fadell’s leadership, saying revenue grew more than 50 percent year over year since it began shipping products in 2011.)

To be sure, this is a setback for Google. But it doesn’t mean the company is abandoning its hardware aspirations. It recently promoted another rising star, Rick Osterloh, a former president at Motorola. As a new Google senior vice president, Osterloh leads the company’s hardware efforts, including Nexus, Chromecast, and consumer hardware like Chromebooks. He also leads its Advanced Technology and Projects division, which is developing cool stuff like Google’s modular phone, Project Ara.

Larry and Sergey Have Passed the Crown to Google’s New King

Each year, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin write a letter to share their thoughts on what the company stands for and where it’s going. But this year’s Founders’ Letter is different: it wasn’t written by a founder.

More than anything, Pichai’s letter shows how far Google has come since its early days. In the letter that accompanied Google’s 2004 IPO prospectus was, Page and Brin famously declared Google’s motto: “Don’t be evil.” Under Pichai, Google’s motto is more like: do be everywhere.

When Google was founded in 1998, Pichai points out, about 300 million people used the Internet, mostly logging in via desktops and tapping out searches on their keyboards at their desks. Today, everyone has a smartphone and looks up information as they go. “We’re communicating, consuming, educating, and entertaining ourselves, on our phones, in ways unimaginable just a few years ago,” Pichai says. And so Google, he says, is focusing on mobile search. But Google today is also much more than search, he says. It’s machine learning and artificial intelligence; it’s content, especially on Google Play and YouTube; it’s new platforms, like Android and virtual reality; it’s the cloud.

Google is also, he says, about lowering the bar for access to technology so everyone can benefit from it. The way Google thinks about tech isn’t just utilitarian, Pichai suggests. It’s much more than that. “For us, technology is not about the devices or products we build,” Pichai says. “Those aren’t the end goals. Technology is a democratizing force, empowering people through information.” Yes, that rhetoric is undeniably utopian. But if one of the world’s most valuable companies doesn’t give that grand vision a sincere shot, who will?

After Today, Google Officially Becomes Alphabet

Goodbye Google, and hello Alphabet.

Well, sort of. In a post on its investor relations site today, Google announced that its reorganization as Alphabet will be finalized officially by the close of business today, and its stock will transition from Google shares to Alphabet shares.

But before we declare this to be a Really Big Change, it’s worth noting that shares of Google will still trade with the same ticker symbols: GOOG and GOOGL. Only the corporate name on the shares themselves will change (Alphabet Class A Common Stock and Alphabet Class C Common Stock). The Alphabet board of directors will have the same members as the Google board. Shareholders’ rights remain the same, too.

“There will be no change to any day-to-day operations,” a company spokesperson writes in an email to WIRED, “just a legal filing to officially establish the structure.”

In other words, this doesn’t really change much around how Google, er, Alphabet has been running on a day-to-day basis since co-founder Larry Page dropped his famous blog post in August detailing Google’s breakup into multiple companies under the Alphabet umbrella.

One change will be apparent when the company releases its fourth quarter financial results in January, the first time it will report earnings for two different segments of the company: Sundar Pichai’s Google and Larry Page’s Alphabet. The latter includes Calico (life-extension biotech research), Nest (smart home products), Fiber (high-speed Internet service, Ventures (early stage investing), and Capital (growth-stage investing). The upcoming third-quarter earnings this month will be reported the same as in the past.

So, yes, today’s transition is just a formality. But if all goes according to Google’s, I mean Alphabet’s, stated plans, this dividing will ultimately mean the launch of more moonshots than ever.

How Google Became Alphabet, From A to Z

Google said today that it has reorganized itself under a new parent company, Alphabet. Founded in 1998, Google itself may be known for search, but it has done a whole lot more since then, from building a whole new kind of advertising business to a whole new kind of car. WIRED has followed Google since the beginning. From its roots to the present day, the history of the company formerly known as Google offers hints at where Alphabet might be headed.

Once Upon a Time… (2005)
The story of how it all began. “We both found each other obnoxious,” Sergey Brin told WIRED of himself and Google co-founder Larry Page.

Good vs. Evil (2003)
Google is well known for its motto “Don’t be evil,” but WIRED wondered if the company could stay true to its roots as it grew.

The Complete Guide to: Googlemania! (2004)
The world watched as Google went public. “The Google IPO is the rarest kind: one that draws the white-hot glare of public attention,” Marc Andreessen told WIRED. That reminds us of another announcement (cough cough, Alphabet).

Larry Page Lays Out His Plan for Your Future (2014)
Page wants to build the future—and he wants you to know it. “Companies are doing the same incremental thing that they did 50 years ago, 20 years ago,” Page explained in a TED talk last year. “That’s not really what we need.”

Most recently Google’s senior vice president of product, Pichai will be the new CEO of Google proper. But he made his name as the man in charge of Chrome and Android. “I have a secret project which adds four hours every day to the 24 hours we have,” Pichai joked with us about how he gets everything done. “There’s a bit of time travel involved.”

Alphabet Lets Google Chase Moonshots And Stay Profitable (2015)
By separating the moonshots from Google’s core internet operations, Larry Page can show investors that the company’s bread-and-butter businesses remain highly profitable, even if the moonshots fail to turn a profit for years on end.

Now It Can Be Evil! Twitter Reacts to Google’s Alphabet

Rarely is the Internet simply handed a joke fest on this scale. Google just created a new umbrella company called Alphabet, which means—naturally—#tech Twitter had a field day. We collected the best puns we found for your easy perusal.

guys guys “google” is still the verb, “alphabet” is now the noun you curse for co-opting your entire livelihood — Casey Johnston (@caseyjohnston) August 10, 2015

I can’t want for other tech companies to create tech companies that own their tech companies. #itwillhappen — Jessica Lessin (@Jessicalessin) August 10, 2015

There’s an Easter Egg in Larry Page’s Alphabet Letter

As pointed out by POLITICO’s deputy media editor Alex Weprin, there’s an Easter egg hiding in Google co-founder Larry Page’s letter about how the tech giant is reorganizing itself into a new company called Alphabet:

The Guy Who Owns @Alphabet Is About to Get Paaaaaid

The “Dad. Husband. And self-proclaimed geek…” who lays claim to the Twitter handle @alphabet probably will be pocketing a large sum of money soon. Google just announced that it will become one of several subsidiaries under a new parent company called, you guessed it, Alphabet. And this being the age of social media, you know it’s gonna want that handle.

Andrikanich’s personal Web site is currently offline, but we’d suggest updating while the eyes of the world are on his Twitter profile page. He’s got just 899 followers at the moment. You can bet that will change soon.

We asked Andrikanich on Twitter if Google/Alphabet has reached out yet. We’ll update if we hear.

Google’s New Parent Company Alphabet Has a Killer URL

When you’re the world’s dominant Internet company, you need a great URL. And Alphabet, the new parent company spawned from Google’s surprise reorganization, doesn’t disappoint. Head on over to http://www.abc.xyz to read Google co-founder Larry Page’s explanation of why he decided to remake Google for the post-dotcom era. Just one small irony:

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